Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

In times when venture capital is hard to get, investors extract high costs for failure (down-rounds, cram downs , new management teams, shut down the company.) Marketing demand creation programs (Search Engine Marketing, Public Relations, Advertising, Lead Generation, Trade Shows, etc.)

Lean 244

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 244

VC Cafe

MAY 23, 2023

As I mentioned in my post on the LLM Benchmarking , venture capital investment in AI startups was down 43% in Q1 2023. So one way to think about it is no different from how we have thought about maybe the personal computing shift, the internet shift, the mobile shift. So along that dimension, I think it’s a big shift.”

Generative AI 165

Generative AI Artificial Inteligence ChatGPT API 165

Steve Blank

AUGUST 13, 2009

It took me 8 startups and 21 years to get it right, (and one can argue success was due to the Internet bubble rather then any brilliance.) No internet, no blogs, no books on startups, no entrepreneurship departments in universities, etc. Since I wasn’t an engineer, my contribution was around the team-building and fund raising.

Silicon Valley 179

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review Lean 179

David Teten

DECEMBER 3, 2019

Private equity and venture capital investors are copying our sisters in the hedge fund world: we’re trying to automate more of our job. . Meyler Capital is taking the analytical rigor of modern internet marketing and applying it to fund marketing. . ff Venture Capital hired two full-time engineers to build out Totem.

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Software Review Analytics Private Equity 78

Austin Startup

MARCH 7, 2018

Mellie Price (@mellieprice) | Twitter Heather Brunner CEO WPEngine Heather Brunner is one of the most successful tech CEO’s in Austin’s history, recently raising $250 million in funding from Silver Lake for WP Engine, the leading digital experience platform built on Wordpress.

Technical Cofounder 48

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 48

VC Cafe

FEBRUARY 7, 2011

I genuinely believe that when it comes to internet investments, eCommerce is not only a VC story, but that it is the VC story. They are accustomed to more frictionless buying, easier payments, smarter recommendation engines, sharper display (product images, 3D, HD), short fulfillment time, and excellent customer service. Here’s why ….

eCommerce 94

eCommerce Open Source SEM Technical Review 94

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

My ex-boss was going to be the VP of Engineering and I would report to the CEO whose marketing acumen and sales instincts seemed at the time to be telepathic and sense of theater was legend. Our vision was that just as the PC was revolutionizing the business market, we were going to do the same for scientists and engineers.

North Carolina 125

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 125

Seeing Both Sides

AUGUST 16, 2012

Last week, I wrote about Akamai , a company with strong network effects that successfully transitioned from a single product to build a platform that garners over a billion dollars in revenue and is now a core part of the Internet’s fabric. TripAdvisor, in effect, was a model lean start-up with an engineering-driven, product-focused founder.

Part-Time VPE 54

Part-Time VPE Software Review Costa Rica Technical Review 54

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 30, 2009

As the engineers were busy rearchitecting the original Stanford MIPS chip into a commercial product, one of my jobs was to find out what features customers wanted. On the other hand, the Motorola 68000 microprocessor (used in the Sun and Apollo engineering workstations) and the IBM 360/370 mainframes were big-endian. What a great idea.

Customer Development 278

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 278

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 6, 2011

In fact, in the discussion on JuJu brands is yet another validation of the verticalization and niche-ization of the Internet. This week, I published an article called The Top 10 Vertical and Social Web Trends where I have discussed this at length. Photo by yirsh. Discuss.

Vertical 115

Vertical Web San Francisco Entrepreneur 115

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 12, 2009

When I learned that Cray users would be giving papers at the Society of Petroleum Engineering conference in Denver the next day, I got on a plane to listen and learn. The magazines got passed around to all the engineers until they were dog-eared and worn. But I was breathing heavy and it felt like I was looking at supercomputer porn.

Silicon Valley 147

Silicon Valley RSS Software Review Technical Review 147

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

At the time no one (including Apple) knew exactly what consumers were going to do with multimedia, it was still pre-Internet. A month or two before the QuickTime public announcement in May, the SuperMac hardware engineers (who had a great relationship with the QuickTime team at Apple) started a “ skunk works ” project.

Video 164

Video Silicon Valley RSS California 164

Steve Blank

JUNE 29, 2009

Since there was very little documentation my time was split between the design engineers who built the system and the test and deployment team getting the system ready to go overseas. After I was done teaching each the day, I continued to write the operations manuals and work with the test engineers. (I Are You Single? Sign me up.

Agile 245

Agile Silicon Valley RSS California 245

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

Since no benchmarks existed, we enlisted our engineering department in a serious software development effort and wrote our own. Our first thought was to spread the news ourselves, perhaps in a press release or a “white paper,” (remember this was pre-Internet.) None of this was an accident. It was all part of a strategy.

Silicon Valley 124

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 124

techcrunch.com

FEBRUARY 19, 2010

Researchers polled experts in lending, mezzanine capital, private equity, venture capital and private businesses themselves. Not a big shock, but things don’t look pretty, especially in the venture capital world. 41% of them feel that they qualify for venture capital funding.

Venture Capital 62

Venture Capital Technical Review Sweat Equity Valuation 62

thebarefootvc

JUNE 6, 2013

According to a recent Cisco report, last year’s mobile data traffic was nearly 12x the size of the ENTIRE global Internet in 2000. Entrepreneurship Mobile Startups Technology Venture Capital interpretative intelligence Social Entrepreneurship technology'

Venture Capital 88

Venture Capital Mobile Vertical Algorithm 88

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

Home Books for Startups Guide Secret History-Bibliography Steve Blank Startup Tools Steve Blank Entries RSS | Comments RSS Email Subscription Get Steve Blank via your RSS Feed RSS - Posts RSS - Comments Categories Air Force (12) Ardent (10) Audubon (1) Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan (39) Business Model versus Business Plan (..)

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

Steve Blank

AUGUST 24, 2009

The quintessential California couple, they stood out in our crowd as the engineer (in his late 20′s, respected by his peers and the customer) had hair down to his shoulders, sharply contrasting with the military crewcuts of the customers and most of the other contractors. Instead, this is a culture clash.

Silicon Valley 184

Silicon Valley PR Technical Review RSS 184

www.chubbybrain.com

SEPTEMBER 28, 2011

If you are an entrepreneur seeking funding, try our free Funding Recommendation Engine to identify a list of angels, venture capital and state grant programs that best match your business. Thin line between life and death of internet service is a number of users. Best of luck in your venture. It’s free.

Software Review 79

Software Review Startup Technical Review Vesting 79

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

A large number of these customers had mailed back their registration cards (this was pre-Internet) with their names, phone numbers, job titles, etc. This was a company that had sold 15,000 graphics boards and monitors to consumers. So I asked the fatal question, “Has anyone ever looked at the customer registration cards?

Silicon Valley 185

Silicon Valley RSS Software Review Technical Review 185

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

The meaning of alpha test , beta test, and first customer ship are pretty obvious to most engineers. The plan calls for selling in volume the day Engineering is finished building the product. While the product is being engineered, Marketing begins to create web sites, corporate presentations and sales materials.

Customer Development 215

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 215

www.informationarbitrage.com

FEBRUARY 24, 2010

And if this business partnership doesn't work out, the CTO / Founder, the engine of value for the company, is stuck in a bad, bad place. And if this business partnership doesn't work out, the CTO / Founder, the engine of value for the company, is stuck in a bad, bad place. Click to email him.

CTO Hire 40

CTO Hire Founder Cap Table Vesting 40

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

And thanks to the radical transparency enabled by the internet, the quality of these proposals is actually constantly rising, to the point that it’s almost impossible to judge the quality of the final product – because all the proposals look polished and professional, even the terrible ones.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Steve Blank

AUGUST 3, 2009

Frederick Terman, Stanford’s Dean of Engineering, enlisted Stanford University as a major arms suppliers in this war. Stanford as a Center of Microwave and Electronics In 1946 after running the military’s secret 800 person Electronic Warfare Lab at Harvard, Fred Terman returned to Stanford as the dean of the engineering schoo l.

Silicon Valley 153

Silicon Valley RSS Europe Germany 153

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2009

Now we were faced with the fact that even though we were gaining market share daily, there was nothing coming out of Engineering. Instead of eight boards, Engineering was going to be able to deliver one new graphics board. One of the reasons I had joined the company was seeing these boards as hope for the future. What could we do?

Silicon Valley 134

Silicon Valley Product RSS Engineer 134

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

The startup develops its first positioning statement and uses this to explain the company and its benefits to venture capitalists. Combined with product costs, an engineering budget, and schedules, this results in a spreadsheet that faintly resembles the first financial plan in the company’s business plan.

Silicon Valley 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

blog.expensify.com

APRIL 24, 2012

Had I known it was going to take the internet by storm I probably would have been a bit more careful with my word choice (especially referring to.NET as a language, doh!). Happy Look Like an Idiot on the Internet Day. I am the VP of Engineering at a cutting-edge startup that sells software built on the.NET platform. Dan Elliott.

Java 107

Java PHP Software Review Coder 107

Reid Hoffman

SEPTEMBER 8, 2020

This pivot fundamentally changes your required organizational competencies, from Sales and Marketing to Engineering, Operations, and Support. I’m not saying this because I’m trying to pump up the venture capital industry; it’s based on my experiences as an entrepreneur, where I had great VC partners (and some not so great ones).

Startup 36

Startup Silicon Valley Business Model Mobile 36